Questioningly Winner: Cast Party

In last week’s contest, we asked readers to cast their own bio-pics. Well, not their own exactly—we weren’t asking them to propose an actor to play them. We were asking which actors, past or present, best matched up with historical figures. Could Bill Murray play Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Oh, wait: that’s happening.

The question was open-ended, maybe the most freewheeling of recent Questioningly prompts, and all manner of luminaries were covered by readers’ submissions, from politicians (lots of Romney casting suggestions, from Crispin Glover to Tom Bergeron) to athletes (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as O. J. Simpson, proposed by @chromageddon) to musicians (Jesse Eisenberg as Leo Sayer, proposed by @tomimendel). Sometimes readers went for superficial resemblance, such as @frezziezfilm, who cast Steve Buscemi as Don Knotts. Sometimes they went for a deeper connection: @danihartnyc wondered if Chris Brown should play Ike Turner (apologies to Laurence Fishburne). Some were just surreal: @izzy68 somehow imagined, or imagined that she imagined, James Hong as Pol Pot (with Shirley Temple Black as Ma Kettle). And while @kellythul wondered if Donald Trump should be Napoleon, the better suggestion came from @danihartnyc, who gave the role to Danny DeVito.

On, as always, to the runners up and the winners. The most interesting pairings were the less obvious, either in subject or in actor, and extra points were awarded for spotting a rare and previously unconsidered harmony between the two. Along these lines, we had @rockskimmer’s suggestion of Ryan Stiles as Bill Nye, @iamjoelwayne’s suggestion of Chris Cooper as Robert Oppenheimer, and @MariusSchrader’s entirely obscure but eerily accurate suggestion of Ezra Miller as the Roman emperor Elagabalus. And while it’s virtually impossible to find a role that Nicolas Cage hasn’t tried yet, @animaldrawer wanted him for the title role of the Robert Louis Stevenson Story, and furnished a portrait as proof of concept.

The winner, though, was a bit more contemporary, and devilishly sly: @madbeyond, who wondered if Mary McDonnell should play Elizabeth Warren, which is both a good call and also a sneaky allusion to Warren’s alleged Native American heritage.